Its All About the Show

We have been hinting at big news for weeks now and we are glad to finally be able to share it with you. BlogWorld & New Media Expo West will be held in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Convention Center this November 3 – 5 2011.

For those interested in the long version of why we decided to move to Los Angeles and leave Las Vegas you can read more at the bottom of this post. In short we love Mandalay Bay and Las Vegas. We never thought we would leave but the folks at MB just did not have the space we needed to hold the show there this year so we had to look at other options.

We had two cities on our short list; San Diego and Los Angeles. Being born and raised in Americas Finest City, San Diego was my first choice. We saw the two cities having different distinct advantages. San Diego is the city everyone wants to visit, the downtown area is amazing, the convention center is right on the bay and the weather is always perfect. Another positive for San Diego was that it was close to LA.

LA on the other hand is the center of the Music, TV, and Film industries in North America, has a population of more than 10 million people and the largest population of bloggers, podcasters and other new media content creators in the country. It was the obvious logical choice from a business perspective. We have always attracted new media savvy individuals from traditional music, film and tv but by being in Los Angeles (and New York) we are going to see that participation increase significantly. That means more opportunities for content creators.

The drawback to Los Angeles was quite honestly the downtown LA area. At least that was our perception. Boy were we wrong!

We were blown away by our first site visit to Los Angeles. I have attended numerous events at the LA Convention Center including NAMM,E3 and the LA Auto Show. Honestly I always thought the convention center was great but there was nothing to do once you left the building. That has changed drastically! Downtown Los Angeles is being revitalized. The multi-billion dollar L.A. Live entertainment complex is directly adjacent to the convention center. Several of the downtown hotels have just undergone multi million dollar renovations in order to compete with the new J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels (they are beautiful btw). There are tons of new restaurants, shopping, parks and just cool city stuff that you (at least I) had never imagined of when I thought of Los Angeles. Oh and don’t forget the food trucks.

To sum it up we think all of you are going to find more business opportunities than ever and those of you unfamiliar with Los Angeles are in for a real pleasant surprise.

We would love to hear what you think of the news and welcome any suggestions you might have about how we can make this our best event yet.

Now if you want to know more about what led to this huge decision, read on.

It really started due to logistics. The space at Mandalay Bay was absolutely perfect. The conference sessions and exhibit space were conveniently located side by side, the space was the perfect size and Mandalay Bay is an amazing property. We knew we would need more space in 2011 and that meant we had to move to a different area inside Mandalay Bay. At first our friends at MB told us they didn’t have any space for us but they worked hard to try and accommodate us. They were able to offer us some space eventually but the conference rooms were far removed from the exhibit area. We tried to come up with a creative solution that would make this work for our attendees and exhibitors but simply couldn’t figure out a way to make it work. Of course we looked at other venues in Las Vegas first but we still couldn’t find a workable combination of dates and space. So that made us ask ourselves, if we can’t hold the event here, where would the next BlogWorld be?

Why not San Francisco?

We have discussed San Francisco several times and we love the city but in the end we think San Francisco has the perception of being a technology city and if we were to ever move there, we would have to fight the perception that we were a technology conference and we are not. BlogWorld’s primary focus is content.

About a week ago I sent out a tweet “ARGHHHHH. We are all freaking busting at the seems over here to tell you guys some big news……. “.

This is what we have been dying to share. BlogWorld & New Media Expo will host it’s first east coast event at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City this May 24 – 26! But wait there’s more. “BlogWorld East” will be co-located with Book Expo America!

Why are we doing this?

Because you asked for it. We have seen the numerous tweets, blog posts, and emails asking for an event “like BlogWorld” on the east coast. We heard you.

Does this mean there won’t be a BlogWorld West?

We will be announcing the dates and venue for BlogWorld west next Tuesday right here on the blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc so stay tuned….

Why New York City and Why co-locate with Book Expo?

Two year’s ago at BlogWorld Leo Laporte said during his talk “We are not new media anymore. Now we are just THE MEDIA”. While we all believe that to be true, many in the traditional media are not convinced yet. Since our inception we have had a couple of Big Hairy Audacious Goals. One of them is to foster and accelerate the convergence of traditional and new media. We can’t think of a single better opportunity to help us accomplish that goal. New York City is the center of the traditional media universe. For four days Book Expo America is the center of the traditional publishing universe. By locating BlogWorld and Book Expo side by side we are bringing the best and brightest from both communities together for the first time anywhere. By the way the folks at Book Expo are just as excited about this as we are.

We only have three short months until the event so news will be coming fast and furious. If you want to exhibit or sponsor the event, please contact Patti@blogworldexpo.com right away.

If you would like to speak, you can contact our Conference Director Deb Ng on twitter @blogworldexpo or via email Deb@BlogWorldexpo.com.

For those that want to attend, Registration will be live in a few days.

What’s good, everyone? My name’s Hadji Williams. I’m a long-time blogger and social media junkie; I’ve been online since Netscape 2.0 was fresh and 3.5-inch floppies were cool. Additionally, I’m a veteran of the advertising, marketing worlds. (but don’t hold that against me.)

And last but not least, I’m the Arts/Entertainment Track Coordinator for the 2010 BlogWorld & New Media Expo. In that capacity, I’m working with Rick Calvert, Dave Cynkin, Patty Hoskin and the BWE crew to bring some really cool music artists, forward-looking label execs and other entertainment insiders to come to #BWE10 and not only discuss the nexus between social media and the music/entertainment industries but also put on some great performances.

That’s right y’all. If all goes according to plan—and so far, so good—there will be music plus more than a little mayhem at Mandalay Bay this October.

Now, I don’t want to give too much away at this point; mainly because I’m a tease. Secondly, because we need to finalize a few things yet. But I can disclose the following for now:

(1) The Arts/Entertainment Track will be 4-6 panels packed with people who are actually doing things in this space, not talking heads and wannabe gurus spewing buzzwords and pointing out the obvious.

What’s good, everyone? My name’s Hadji Williams. I’m a long-time blogger and social media junkie; I’ve been online since Netscape 2.0 was fresh and 3.5-inch floppies were cool. Additionally, I’m a veteran of the advertising, marketing worlds. (but don’t hold that against me.)

And last but not least, I’m the Arts/Entertainment Track Coordinator for the 2010 BlogWorld & New Media Expo. In that capacity, I’m working with Rick Calvert, Dave Cynkin, Patty Hoskin and the BWE crew to bring some really cool music artists, forward-looking label execs and other entertainment insiders to come to #BWE10 and not only discuss the nexus between social media and the music/entertainment industries but also put on some great performances.

That’s right y’all. If all goes according to plan—and so far, so good—there will be music plus more than a little mayhem at Mandalay Bay this October.

Now, I don’t want to give too much away at this point; mainly because I’m a tease. Secondly, because we need to finalize a few things yet. But I can disclose the following for now:

(1) The Arts/Entertainment Track will be 4-6 panels packed with people who are actually doing things in this space, not talking heads and wannabe gurus spewing buzzwords and pointing out the obvious.

We just officially announced over the weekend at SXSW that our 2010 dates are October 14 – 16 and we are moving to Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center!

I apologize for not getting the news out sooner but wanted to put up a quick post to let you know why it took so long, why we are moving and give you some other details.

First off this is a very big deal to move the show from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay. I hope you can appreciate we had to keep this top secret until everything was finalized. Rumors suck and we didn’t want anyone to be confused about the dates or the location.

While we love the LVCC (our home for the last three years) we had outgrown the meeting space they had for us. Particularly for our keynotes and all of our community tracks (more on those in a bit). If you have been to the show before you know the LVCC is massive (the 3rd largest convention center in the United States), but we took up every single meeting room next to our exhibit hall and actually had to build out our keynote area on the tradeshow floor. Exhibit halls are not known for their acoustics so this caused some problems with the audio particularly as we grew and it cost us a fortune to put down carpet, AV and a massive 20 foot high drape to divide the keynote area from the exhibit hall.

One other major factor was the location. The LVCC is in a great location for huge events like CES, SEMA and MAGIC, but for us it was inconvenient for our attendees. We couldn’t everyone into the Renaissance hotel which is a 2 minute walk from the South Hall where our show was located. So most people stayed at the Las Vegas Hilton. While it is directly adjacent to the North Hall of the LVCC thats about a mile long walk to where BlogWorld was! Like I said its a big convention center. So our community was spread out and obviously the community feel of the event is a very important thing.

At Mandalay Bay those problems are solved. We have a huge ballroom for our keynotes located right next to the exhibit hall, and all of the other meeting rooms for our breakouts and community tracks surrounding. Of course the convention center is attached to the Mandalay Bay Hotel (my wife’s favorite hotel in Vegas). Mandalay Bay has over 3,300 rooms so everyone can stay there if they like and we were able to negotiate a killer deal for everyone. In large part because the management there sees the huge value of having 3,000 + bloggers, podcasters, and social media influencers staying there.

Whats the deal?

Rooms for $109 a night! That includes free WiFi in your room and of course free WiFi in the conference and exhibit area. Those rooms will go on sale through our site in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for that announcement. These are very nice rooms!

If $109 a night isn’t cheap enough for you, we will be announcing even lower rates at Luxor and Excaliber soon. Both of these hotels are connected to Mandalay Bay via a free monorail. Oh and you high rollers can stay at the very quiet and very cool “The Hotel” which is directly connected to Mandalay Bay, or the even more posh Four Seasons; also directly connected.

A couple other quick items about the conference content. We will be hosting once again the Social Media Business Summit. This content is meant specifically for business owners and business executives to help them understand how to navigate the social media space, and how to use social media tools to build their business, communicate better with their customers and internally. Anyone who had been before knows we have a blockbuster line up of speakers who are offering real actionable business solutions.

We will have tracks on Monetization, Audio, Video, Advanced Podcasting, and New Media 101 for people just getting started with their blogs, podcasts, video and social networking.

Of course we will have community tracks, returning this year we have Sports, Travel, Health Care, Non-profit and Cause Marketing, Politics, Real Estate, Milblogging, Music & Entertainment.

And we have one new community track that everyone seems to be excited about; Food.

We just officially announced over the weekend at SXSW that our 2010 dates are October 14 – 16 and we are moving to Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center!

I apologize for not getting the news out sooner but wanted to put up a quick post to let you know why it took so long, why we are moving and give you some other details.

First off this is a very big deal to move the show from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Mandalay Bay. I hope you can appreciate we had to keep this top secret until everything was finalized. Rumors suck and we didn’t want anyone to be confused about the dates or the location.

While we love the LVCC (our home for the last three years) we had outgrown the meeting space they had for us. Particularly for our keynotes and all of our community tracks (more on those in a bit). If you have been to the show before you know the LVCC is massive (the 3rd largest convention center in the United States), but we took up every single meeting room next to our exhibit hall and actually had to build out our keynote area on the tradeshow floor. Exhibit halls are not known for their acoustics so this caused some problems with the audio particularly as we grew and it cost us a fortune to put down carpet, AV and a massive 20 foot high drape to divide the keynote area from the exhibit hall.

One other major factor was the location. The LVCC is in a great location for huge events like CES, SEMA and MAGIC, but for us it was inconvenient for our attendees. We couldn’t everyone into the Renaissance hotel which is a 2 minute walk from the South Hall where our show was located. So most people stayed at the Las Vegas Hilton. While it is directly adjacent to the North Hall of the LVCC thats about a mile long walk to where BlogWorld was! Like I said its a big convention center. So our community was spread out and obviously the community feel of the event is a very important thing.

At Mandalay Bay those problems are solved. We have a huge ballroom for our keynotes located right next to the exhibit hall, and all of the other meeting rooms for our breakouts and community tracks surrounding. Of course the convention center is attached to the Mandalay Bay Hotel (my wife’s favorite hotel in Vegas). Mandalay Bay has over 3,300 rooms so everyone can stay there if they like and we were able to negotiate a killer deal for everyone. In large part because the management there sees the huge value of having 3,000 + bloggers, podcasters, and social media influencers staying there.

Whats the deal?

Rooms for $109 a night! That includes free WiFi in your room and of course free WiFi in the conference and exhibit area. Those rooms will go on sale through our site in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for that announcement. These are very nice rooms!

If $109 a night isn’t cheap enough for you, we will be announcing even lower rates at Luxor and Excaliber soon. Both of these hotels are connected to Mandalay Bay via a free monorail. Oh and you high rollers can stay at the very quiet and very cool “The Hotel” which is directly connected to Mandalay Bay, or the even more posh Four Seasons; also directly connected.

A couple other quick items about the conference content. We will be hosting once again the Social Media Business Summit. This content is meant specifically for business owners and business executives to help them understand how to navigate the social media space, and how to use social media tools to build their business, communicate better with their customers and internally. Anyone who had been before knows we have a blockbuster line up of speakers who are offering real actionable business solutions.

We will have tracks on Monetization, Audio, Video, Advanced Podcasting, and New Media 101 for people just getting started with their blogs, podcasts, video and social networking.

Of course we will have community tracks, returning this year we have Sports, Travel, Health Care, Non-profit and Cause Marketing, Politics, Real Estate, Milblogging, Music & Entertainment.

And we have one new community track that everyone seems to be excited about; Food.

I am seeing a huge number of searches now that we are in the new year all looking for Blog World 2010. People are searching I suppose to find out the details since we are about 10 months away from the event. The other issue is probably related to the the fact that 150,000 people were geeking out in Las Vegas with each other and are looking forward to SXSW and Blog World Expo. We have not yet worked out the venue details at this time, but the show itself is going to take place on October 14-16, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first day of the show on October 14, 2010 is the Social Media Business Summit. The final two days will be the trade show and convention featuring the exhibitors on the show floor. Once the show venue is determined and those details are confirmed and completed we will be making that announcement.

Until then, feel free to get it on your calendar, and start making your initial plans. Once the other details are confirmed, we will be able to provide more precise information about hotels, parties and all the other fun that we have for three days in Vegas. Three days in Vegas is either a great title for a Tarantino movie or perhaps my next blog post.

I am seeing a huge number of searches now that we are in the new year all looking for Blog World 2010. People are searching I suppose to find out the details since we are about 10 months away from the event. The other issue is probably related to the the fact that 150,000 people were geeking out in Las Vegas with each other and are looking forward to SXSW and Blog World Expo. We have not yet worked out the venue details at this time, but the show itself is going to take place on October 14-16, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first day of the show on October 14, 2010 is the Social Media Business Summit. The final two days will be the trade show and convention featuring the exhibitors on the show floor. Once the show venue is determined and those details are confirmed and completed we will be making that announcement.

Until then, feel free to get it on your calendar, and start making your initial plans. Once the other details are confirmed, we will be able to provide more precise information about hotels, parties and all the other fun that we have for three days in Vegas. Three days in Vegas is either a great title for a Tarantino movie or perhaps my next blog post.

If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times, “We live in a Google world.” It is true, we don’t order Chinese food, find directions to the store, or stalk old girlfriends without using Google. Being findable in this world is important if you are trying to be found. Businesses especially must pay attention to how their customers can find them. Keywords and key phrases are how that is accomplished through the use of meta tags or just tags.

Tags are a keyword associated with content attached to it. If you want people to read your latest blog post on how to wash a cat, you have to determine how they would look for that content and attach that key word or phrase to it.

The same rule applies to your content as a publisher whether it be a blog, a podcast, video or even your photos. We often put pictures into our posts that we find which we feel are relevant to our content, the title or completely off the wall for that matter. We find those pictures at places like flickr, istockphoto, and yes, Google image search. We enter a keyword into the search function of those sites to find a picture for the content.

In addition to being searchable or findable, it also has the effect of increasing traffic to your content and makes the content watched, seen and readable. One of the things that I do on a regular basis is to search out and find anyone that mentions BlogWorld & New Media Expo. You can imagine all the different variations of that and the number of tags used to describe our event. This is also why we like people that use a common tag. The most used tag last year was of course “BWE09” and this year we are urging everyone to use “BWE10”. This allows us a quick reference to your blog post, your picture on your photo sharing site, your podcast and your YouTube (owned of course by Google) or other videos. A YouTube search with “blog world” returns 234,000 results. We all know it may be difficult for me to look at that many videos. Using a tag like BWE10 focuses the searcher into your content. A similar search with BWE09 allows me the benefit of watching less that 150 videos.

If your content is well done and is something we need to share with our community, we find and share it. This in turn increases the readers, listeners, or viewers of your content. We are still pouring over the content generated as a result of the 2009 event in October, I am finding new content daily and still trying to read all of it. As we grow and get bigger and have more content generated it is going to be tougher to find your content and thereby making it even more important for you to tag appropriately.

For the upcoming show in 2010 we are asking everyone to tag your content “BWE10” If you Tweet that hashtag, put that in your post, attach it to your videos, photos and podcasts, I’ll be there to say hello. If it is something that needs to be shared with the thousands of people in our community, we’ll do so and increase your traffic and readership. If I miss something because I couldn’t find it, your content may never get discovered and broadcast further. We are listening and we are paying attention to what is being said. Tag your content!

If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times, “We live in a Google world.” It is true, we don’t order Chinese food, find directions to the store, or stalk old girlfriends without using Google. Being findable in this world is important if you are trying to be found. Businesses especially must pay attention to how their customers can find them. Keywords and key phrases are how that is accomplished through the use of meta tags or just tags.

Tags are a keyword associated with content attached to it. If you want people to read your latest blog post on how to wash a cat, you have to determine how they would look for that content and attach that key word or phrase to it.

The same rule applies to your content as a publisher whether it be a blog, a podcast, video or even your photos. We often put pictures into our posts that we find which we feel are relevant to our content, the title or completely off the wall for that matter. We find those pictures at places like flickr, istockphoto, and yes, Google image search. We enter a keyword into the search function of those sites to find a picture for the content.

In addition to being searchable or findable, it also has the effect of increasing traffic to your content and makes the content watched, seen and readable. One of the things that I do on a regular basis is to search out and find anyone that mentions BlogWorld & New Media Expo. You can imagine all the different variations of that and the number of tags used to describe our event. This is also why we like people that use a common tag. The most used tag last year was of course “BWE09” and this year we are urging everyone to use “BWE10”. This allows us a quick reference to your blog post, your picture on your photo sharing site, your podcast and your YouTube (owned of course by Google) or other videos. A YouTube search with “blog world” returns 234,000 results. We all know it may be difficult for me to look at that many videos. Using a tag like BWE10 focuses the searcher into your content. A similar search with BWE09 allows me the benefit of watching less that 150 videos.

If your content is well done and is something we need to share with our community, we find and share it. This in turn increases the readers, listeners, or viewers of your content. We are still pouring over the content generated as a result of the 2009 event in October, I am finding new content daily and still trying to read all of it. As we grow and get bigger and have more content generated it is going to be tougher to find your content and thereby making it even more important for you to tag appropriately.

For the upcoming show in 2010 we are asking everyone to tag your content “BWE10” If you Tweet that hashtag, put that in your post, attach it to your videos, photos and podcasts, I’ll be there to say hello. If it is something that needs to be shared with the thousands of people in our community, we’ll do so and increase your traffic and readership. If I miss something because I couldn’t find it, your content may never get discovered and broadcast further. We are listening and we are paying attention to what is being said. Tag your content!